


In From The Cold

by clockworkrobots



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Fallen Angels, Fallen Castiel, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-12
Updated: 2013-09-12
Packaged: 2017-12-26 10:08:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/964706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkrobots/pseuds/clockworkrobots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel falls and finds himself in a laundromat.</p><p>(Season 9 spoilers from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3Yf5xvWvsOs">this</a> preview within.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	In From The Cold

The rumble of the washer is somehow a comforting sound amidst the eerie static buzzing of the fluorescent lights overhead, and the dead silence of emptiness otherwise around him. Its shaking rhythm echoes almost like a lullaby in the middle of the night, alone as he is in this laundromat somewhere in the back woods of Colorado.

Castiel can still feel the dried blood of his sister Hael on the skin of his cheek. He should wipe it off, he knows, as soon it will begin itching, and possibly sooner scaring strangers off, but standing near-naked and barefoot on the cold, white tile, he pauses, breathing in the stale air of the room.

He is _breathing,_ he notes, lungs expanding and contracting and taking oxygen into his blood. His blood pumps through his veins towards his beating heart that feels light and heavy all at once in his chest, an organ both familiar and foreign now--old and new.

He _knows_ this body. He's worn it for years. He knows the way his hands move and the way his knuckles bend into a fist, and the way to twist around and kill a man in one fell swoop. But he's hardly known _this—_ not even when he was falling, years ago—this sense of not only _wearing_ it, but being _submerged_ in his skin, nerves humming just beneath it as an extension of himself. It's now a _part_ of him as his wings once were.

Castiel _has_ corporeal limbs now instead of merely uses them, and what a striking change that is. If he thinks about it too hard, he doesn't quite understand it, as he flexes his fingers against the vibrating top of the machine, spread out star-like on its surface. How can he _be?_ He is all the lifetime of an angel stripped of his energy, his essence, and compressed into a box made from bones, borrowed from another. He remembers a time before this species of human brain even evolved, even developed this formation of cells called a brain, and now one is his, synapses firing and slowly dying.

His body will decay, and with it, so will he.

But miraculously, impossibly, for now he is _alive_. He is alive and breathing and he thinks he feels his stomach clench in the awkward pains of early hunger. _That,_ at least, is something he understands.

Castiel casts his gaze around the room to spy a set of vending machines across from the row of washers. Upon the sight of sugar loaded candy bars and more-than-likely-expired chips, his stomach clenches harder, aching to be filled. But before he can contemplate how to break the glass or somehow shake the machine to get at the food for free (for the change he found on the floor of Hael's broken car is even more limited than it was, now that he's used over half of it for washing), his eyes fall next onto the telephone beside it.

He barely has to think about it before he's across the room and holding the cold, black phone in his hand, and punching in the number that he somehow knows instinctually to use, as if it were a psalm or prayer learned long ago, impossible to forget.

“Who is this?” Dean's voice breaks through the line when he picks up. He sounds tired, worn, as Castiel feels. Though he is worried for Dean, of course, somehow he feels comforted by the thought that his friend is feeling the same things as him.

“Dean.”

There is a surprised pause. Castiel thinks he can hear Dean moving quickly--the opening of a door, the rushed escape to the privacy of a hall, perhaps. “Cas?” Dean asks tentatively first, but then quicker, more desperate: “Cas, what the hell happened?”

The small hairs on the backs of Castiel's bare arms raise as their follicles prickle up with cold. He suddenly wishes to be able to wrap the long length of his coat around his shoulders. “Metatron, he tricked me,” he explains, closing his eyes as an evasion from the harsh light of the laundromat. “It was like Naomi said after all: it was all a trap.”

He hears Dean suck in a breath, but his friend does not sound surprised. “Did you... I saw angels fall out of the sky. Are you—are you alright?” he asks. Of course he does. Dean rushed to his brother's side as he was dying and who knows what injuries he might have sustained himself as the sky lit up and broke apart, but he asks after _Cas._

“I—I don't know,” he answers honestly. He wonders if he's still in shock. He feels too much and too little all at once. “Metatron stole my grace.”

“Cas—” Dean begins to say, attempt to console him, maybe, but Castiel cuts him off. He _needs_ to talk about this himself. Maybe if he says it out loud, hears the words create waves against the thin membrane of his ear drums, he will understand how this is all _real_.

“I'm not an angel anymore, Dean. I don't know if I'm okay because I don't know who I am.” He is not an angel anymore, and how can he be human? He never had a soul.

Dean's logic, though, is not so complicated by existential crises. Maybe his convictions give him access to truths still beyond Castiel's reach. “You're _Cas_ ,” he says, as if he's ever been anything else. Though Dean cannot see, and Castiel does not tell him, it makes Castiel crack a small smile.

“Yes. I suppose that's something.”

Not for the first time, he wishes Dean were here beside him. There was never anyone so beautifully, expertly human as Dean Winchester, and Castiel longs for his simple assurances that he remembers hearing years ago, when he first teetered on the edge of the human precipice.

But before he can voice this nostalgia, Dean lets out a shuddering sigh, mood turning. Castiel already suspects what it will be about before Dean speaks.

“Listen. Sam, he's—something happened to him, when I stopped him from completing the last trial. I'm at a hospital with him now, but he hasn't woken up since he passed out somewhere on the highway between the church and here.”

“I'm sorry, Dean,” he says, as a weak consolation, and he _is_. He should have known Metatron was not to be trusted from the beginning—that _none_ of his words were. If only he'd known what the demon trials would do to Sam. If only he'd known what would be done to _himself_ in the name of God's word and law. There are too many regrets to name.

“It's not _your_ fault that he won't stop _resonating_ or whatever,” Dean huffs in frustration. Castiel imagines Dean pinching the bridge of his nose. “You said even when you still... when you still had your grace you couldn't fix him.”

“Still,” Castiel says. “I am sorry. And I'm sorry I don't know how to help. Especially now, I'm afraid I'm next to useless.” His chest feels tight and his voice feels strained when he continues, “What was it you said once? Like a baby in a trench coat? Though I suppose that would need to be re-qualified as well, as I'm currently naked,” Castiel muses wryly, looking down at himself, standing only in his underwear.

“ _What?_ ”

“Oh, yes.” Apparently that was not the line Dean had expected. “I'm calling from a laundromat in...,” he checks the name on the poster on the opposite wall, near his chosen washer, “Glenwood Springs, Colorado. I had an encounter with one of my fallen sisters. It was... bloody.” His mouth twists into a frown. “Regretful,” he amends. That's a better word.

“So you're standing naked in the middle of a _laundromat?_ ” Dean laughs. Cas presses the receiver closer to his ear, drawn to the sound. It's a _good_ sound, full of warm colours like red and brown, inviting like his hair and lips and—

Castiel is getting distracted.

“Better than covered in bees, I guess,” Dean continues chuckling, until he comes to the inevitable question of why exactly Cas is here at all. “Wait, are you jacking someone's left over laundry?”

“No. I'm washing my— _Jimmy's_ ,” he corrects, a sour taste of guilt washing up in the back of his throat, “suit.”

“What? Dude, you can't machine wash a suit!”

Castiel scrunches his brow, frowning at the phantom presence of Dean in the room. “Why not?”

“Because you _can't._ Totally ruins the fibres, it'll come out all shitty and stretched.”

“That seems like poor design,” Castiel objects, but he supposes it's useless now. If Jimmy's suit would be ruined by washing, it is already done for. Castiel tries to quell the surge of self-directed anger that swells within him over the fact that he's wrecked yet another precious thing, but that particular guilt appeased for the moment by the knowledge that Castiel's biggest sin against Jimmy was hardly wrecking his _clothes._

“Yeah, well, it is what it is. Maybe you should look into stealing some new threads after all,” Dean suggests, and it is indeed a good idea, if only for the fact that Castiel knows Jimmy's suit and coat will be recognisable to many angels who might be after him, after what he did, what he caused them to lose.

“Is that to be my first action as a human?” he tries to joke for some levity. He feels like him and Dean could both use it. “Felony?”

“Hey, you're one of us now,” Castiel thinks he hears Dean grin. “Par for the course, sometimes.”

_One of us._

Castiel doesn't know if by that he means _humanity_ or _Winchesters_ , but for Castiel, those words have really always meant the same thing.

“I—” he starts to thank him for his support, when a loud crashing sound is heard in the background, on Dean's end of the line. Castiel's skin grows colder somehow, than it already is. “Dean?”

“Cas, fuck—”

There's more banging, some yelling, the dull _thud_ of someone being struck. Castiel may no longer be an angel, but he will _always_ be a soldier, and this is a scenario he knows well. It sounds like an attack.

There is a cry that Castiel thinks comes from Dean, and then one from Castiel himself in reflex. “ _Dean!_ ”

Silence.

The disturbing chill in his blood is no longer at all from the air of the building, as an ominous sense of danger overcomes him.

“Castiel?” the lines crackles to life again. The voice that renews the connection is not Dean's.

Castiel's voice is stoic and cold. “Yes.”

“I'm sorry for you that you are still alive, brother,” a taunting voice says. Once, Castiel would have been able to name his lost sibling from their voice alone. Now, their identity, except as an exiled angel, is a mystery. Clearly, his sibling blames Castiel for their fall as much as he does himself.

There are some further sound of a struggle, Dean fighting his assaulter's hold perhaps, but it is a disturbance silenced again quickly by a muffled grunt.

“For as compensation we will now have to take the life of your friend,” the angel speaks again, anger lacing his words with a venom as sharp as a sword.

Castiel's heart _burns_. “You will not touch him,” he growls, as commanding as he can make his human vocal chords sounds. “He had nothing to do with this.”

“Didn't he?” the unnamed angel laughs mirthlessly. “Was this not the filthy _human_ whom you rescued from Hell? You never truly were clean after that. You were tainted and lost as Lucifer from the beginning,” they accuse. Castiel finds he cannot correct them.

“Brother, _stop,_ ” he pleads, a last ditch effort of a helpless hand. “Please.”

“Too late, Castiel,” they bite. “You're too late.”

The line dies, suggesting with surety that _Dean_ dies, and something in Castiel dies, too.

He stands frozen in a laundromat in the backwoods of Colorado, half-naked and lost, and never more _alone._ The blood pumping through his ears is a pitiful reminder of a life he did not ask for, of a life just lost, and all the lies about love and paradise he's ever been told evaporate in the hollow sound.

 

***

  
But, as it turns out—days, weeks, who knows how long later (for Castiel doesn't, not anymore, without an angel's instinctual precision)—Dean did not die that day. Castiel was yet again the victim of a tricky game of revenge and violence, who's rules he only ever learns of once the round has ended.

When he finds Dean, however, Castiel _knows_ something else has begun. After too many dreary, lonely hours spent scrounging in the dirt of the city for survival, to fall into Dean's arms in a tight, relieved embrace makes Castiel prefer to think of _today_ as the first day of his new life. Perhaps respite exists after all.

Maybe good thing _do_ happen.

“God, those cargo pants are hideous,” Dean laughs when he pulls back, finally getting a good look at Cas.

“Fashion was hardly a priority,” Castiel feels the need to say, but though his tone is dry, his eyes are amused. After everything, Dean chooses to comment on his _pants_ first. It brings back a memory of their meeting on that first fall day, when Dean called Castiel a “holy tax accountant,” doubtful an angel would appear to him in a _business outfit_. Some things never change, and for that, Castiel is grateful.

Dean's mouth twists in refusal to acknowledge the necessity of such a choice in trousers. “I'm more offended that someone else had once actually bought them in the first place.”

“They have proved practical,” Castiel says. In many ways, they've been far more useful to him than any other clothing he's worn before ever was. They have _so very many pockets_.

“No,” Dean remains firm. “No, no, no, there's no excuse for cargo pants. We'll have to get you some real pants. Jeans. Rugged, hunter-approved jeans,” he nods, satisfied with his decision.

“By hunter-approved I think you mean _you_ -approved.”

Dean grins, even more self-satisfied at this observation. “Hell _yeah,_ that's what I mean. You know any better hunters?”

Castiel can't honestly say he does. Dean has always been the best of everything to him.

Of course, that also means he's been the best opponent at argument.

“So what is your judgment of the sweater?”

“Hmm,” Dean's eyes rake over his body, and something in Castiel tenses in excitement. “The hoodie can stay.”

It's only coincidence that the sweater is also Castiel's favourite, but Castiel is happy for the approval all the same. Still, he also has no other clothes at the moment, and little desire to change( and perhaps he might be just a _little_ attached to the pants by now). “I hope you know you have little control over whether I keep or throw away any of this,” he warns.

“Can't blame a guy for trying though,” Dean smiles, relenting. Despite their sartorial disagreements, and disputes of every other kind, Dean looks genuinely happy to see him again. Not that Castiel had truly thought he'd be turned away, but irrational worry has caught up with him as much as human limitation of late. He feels uncontrollably happy too, and a sudden, insistent desire to touch Dean floods through him then. It's a desire to assure himself that he's real, that he's _alive_. Castiel doesn't know when he became so tactile, but he doesn't care to question it, only to question the use of the yearning distance between his hands and Dean's skin.

“I'll find someway to get you out of those pants,” Dean assures him still, and then starts and blushes. “Uh—shit, no I mean, some way to get you to _stop wearing_ them, not get you out of them like I want you to take them _off_. Well, no, you _should_ take them off, just not like... fuck,” he stutters, and sighs at himself. “Why did you have to tell me you were naked?” he asks disbelievingly, and it might be simply rhetorical, but there's a sentiment in that chastisement that worries Castiel.

“Do you find my naked body offensive as well?” he asks cautiously. This has never been an important question before, but he wants Dean to _accept_ him again, and this body is wholly and totally _his_ now.

“What?” Dean looks surprised at such a question. “No, man, from what I've seen your body is _great_ —” he catches himself again. “Shit, that came out wrong, too. I mean, yeah, great _that_ way too, but not that I ever—I never—I mean, _sometimes_ , obviously. But that's not what I—” he groans, shakes his head. “Forget it. Conversation over.”

“I'm not exactly sure what this conversation was to begin with.”

Dean stuffs his hands in his pockets, but remains close to Castiel's side as they make their way back to Sam and the Impala, parked a couple blocks away. “Good. Great.”

“I'm glad I found you, Dean,” Castiel tells him, finally in the comfort of his company. He never thought he would again, and for that, he is so, so _glad._

The sun reflects off of Dean's hair in a way that makes it look more blond than brown. “Same, Cas. Same,” he smiles. It's a spark.

 

*** 

  
It's months before either of them have the courage to close the distance between their bodies again, but their first coming together after all this time, after all these years of building tension, is not lacking by its lateness. If anything, their terrible timing makes it something _more,_ something sharper, like the collision of a giant white cap wave against a rocky cliff, exploding up in salty spray.

Of course, it's not seawater that either of them taste that night, though their mouths are salty with sweat and spit. But it's a good taste, somehow, in its bitterness. It's a flavour Castiel has never experienced in this way, and he wants to know every shape of it.

“ _Ugh,_ ” Dean says against his mouth, trying to push Cas' jeans down without really breaking his kiss. “Get these off.”

“Have you aways been this eager to undress me?” Castiel teases, hands falling from Dean's shoulders to aid in their mutual divestment of needless divisions. There should be no barriers between them here, now, least of all of cloth, but of _truth,_ too.

“Yeah,” Dean laughs against the scruffy side of Castiel's cheek, and he can feel it vibrate through him. He closes his eyes, forehead leaning against Dean's temple, where his hair is already damp from desperation and anticipation.

“How long?” he whispers, as his pants fall around his thighs, which not slim enough for the jeans to fall all the way to his ankles. Dean has no objection to this though, as Castiel has an idea that Dean will enjoy the muscles of Cas' thighs tonight, built up even more in the past few months in this life of hunting.

“Jesus, I don't—” Dean begins to brush off, too distracted by getting them both properly naked. But he pauses when he takes a much needed, heavy breath. He pulls slightly back to look at Cas, then, eyes open, honest. _How beautiful they are,_ Castiel thinks.

“ _Years,_ Cas,” he says. “Too fucking long.”

_Indeed._

When their pants and socks are suitably thrown away, forgotten for now where ever they happen to fall on the floor, Dean and Cas fall back onto Dean's bed, which is neatly made but is soon to be not. They will make sure of it.

Dean lays back as Castiel sits atop him, thigh straddling his hips where their hard cocks touch. It's all Castiel can do to grind down, then, wracking them both with a gasp.

Dean pulls Castiel down by the back of the neck for a kiss.

“I have never thought about my own body in this way,” Castiel has to explain as their mouths move together, and their hands find notches, places to grab onto, to explore, to feel the oil of their fingertips smear into the other's skin. He has to explain because he has to share this experience with Dean in every way, including the confusion, the bursting recognition of his desire to consume shared breaths, the revelation that he can _have this_. “It's never been my own body before.”

“So I'm your learning curve?” Dean smirks, enjoying the attention, but also joking to lighten the weight of it. They both have a learning curve to climb here.

Castiel moves down to kiss the back of his jaw, stubbly with 5 o'clock shadow. “Yours though, I've known in the most intimate places, piecing it back atom by atom to its current shape.” His right hand finds the soft edge of Dean's torso, were his belly turns into bony hip.

“Cas—”

Castiel is not finished, however. “But despite the shape of the scar that I left on you, I did not have hands to touch you with. I surrounded you, enveloped you within my grace. I _knew_ you,” he tells him. “But I did not touch you.”

His thumb presses into the give of Dean's flesh as they grind together again.

Dean lets out an ragged, breathy laugh. “Certainly getting the hang of touching me now.” He has a hand on Cas' back, and Castiel wonders if the heat of it will mark him the same, sear a red mark into his skin.

“It is,” he kisses him, “indeed,” Dean fists his hair, fingers scraping against his scalp, “addictive.”

There is something building in the pit of Cas' stomach, his cock already thick and wanting, leaking onto Dean's hip. He is close, reaching for something, but he has yet to discover _what_.

He trusts Dean to take him there.

“This isn't the half of it, buddy. I'm gonna fucking rock your world.”

“Mmm, I know you will,” Castiel hums against him. “You have. You are. You will never stop.”

They move faster after that, more urgent, more electric as their cocks slide together in the mixture of pre-come and sweat that they've created. Castiel's mind is frantic, spinning, but his body is grounded, locked in bed with Dean in the only place he'd rather be.

Dean moves a hand down to fist them both, easily brining Castiel off within moments, and Castiel feels like all the air has been punched out of him, but also feels full and floating with _something_ at the same time. His thoughts are hazy with raw and tender pleasure, but his eyes--his eyes are still transfixed on _Dean._

“I'm so glad I found you, Dean Winchester,” he says, voice hitching, and then Dean is coming too.

In the aftermath, his whole body thrums with his gratefulness, curving into Dean's heat like the soothing fire it is, a warm and welcoming hearth. His skin shines with sweat and the muscles of his thighs already feel hot in their gentle burning, appreciative the positions they've been put through, but weary for it nonetheless.

It's a good tiredness, though, that Castiel feels as he falls against Dean, as they lie there together, in the dark.

 _I'm so glad I found you_ , he kisses into Dean's neck, down his collar, scrapes into his skin.

Castiel says _I'm so glad I found you,_ and he means _I love you._ He means _for all the times I've left, I'll always come back_. He means _in you, I've found a home_.

Dean's breath is humid and damp, as he breathes out with a shaky smile, finally requited in every sense.

“Me too.”


End file.
